Slim pickings?_其他_趣味英语-查字典英语网

Slim pickings?

Luckily for the hungry vultures, the slim pickings are easy pickings, so to speak and relatively speaking, thanks to their hooky beak and everything, but usually and overall, slim pickings are a sign of scarcity and poverty.

Hence and in short, as a metaphor, slim pickings may represent anything that’s scare and rare, be it food on the table or opportunities for success.

Here are media examples:

1. At a time when theater already seems culturally marginal, the Pulitzer board’s announcement yesterday that it awarded no prize this year in drama was dispiriting, but not particularly surprising.

It wasn’t unprecedented: The Pulitzer board has declined to give an award in a category 58 times since 1917, and 15 times in drama - the most of any category. And an administrative change affected the eligibility: The drama award was in the process of switching to a calendar-year schedule from a March-to-March schedule.

It was also just slim pickings this year, the chair of the selection committee and Newsday’s chief drama critic, Linda Winer, said. “There wasn’t anything that stood up and screamed, ‘Look at me, I’m a Pulitzer Prize-winning play!’ ... That doesn’t mean that there wasn’t some really distinguished work done,” she said. “It just means that there wasn’t any obvious Pulitzer play.”

The process of choosing a prize-winning play starts with a committee of jurors that selects three nominees. This year, they were “Miss Witherspoon,” by Christopher Durang, “The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow,” by Rolin Jones, and “Red Light Winter,” by Adam Rapp.